Staff Meeting
by Susan M. M
Summary: Captain Bridger and Dr. Westphalen are concerned about the reports being miswritten by the boat's crew and the science staff. Spelling, grammar, and punctuation lessons "sugar-coated" in a story. CURRENTLY ON HIATUS, although I promise to get back to it eventually.
1. Houston, We Have a Problem

**Staff Meeting**

**Author's Note: **_Standard fanfic disclaimer that wouldn't last ten seconds in a court of law: these aren't my characters, I'm just borrowing them for, um, typing practice. That's it, typing practice. I'll return them to their actual owners (relatively) undamaged. Based on characters and situations created by Rockne S. O'Bannon. This is an amateur work of fiction; no profit beyond pleasure was derived from the writing. __**Actually, that's a fib.**__ I'm hoping to derive some profit from this story, albeit intellectual rather than financial. I generally loathe "preachy" stories, preferring to reserve sermons for Sunday. But this __is__ a preachy story. Explanations continued in author's note at the end of this chapter. _

_**xxXXxx**_

_**xxXXxx**_

**Staff Meeting**

by Susan M. M.

_seaQuest DSV_

_**xxXXxx**_

_**xxXXxx**_

Captain Nathan Bridger sat at the head of the table. Dr. Kristin Westphalen sat at his right side, Commander Jonathan Ford at his left. He looked at the officers and scientists gathered around the table. His gray eyes were stern. "I've called this meeting because Dr. Westphalen and I have something we need to discuss with you."

"Congratulations, sir!" Lt. Ben Krieg said enthusiastically. "I'm sure you'll be very happy together. Have you set the date yet?"

Dr. Westphalen glared at the dark-haired lieutenant.

Cmdr. Ford turned to Bridger, and completely deadpan, asked, "Permission to keelhaul, sir?"

"Denied." Pointedly ignoring Krieg, the captain continued, "Dr. Westphalen and I have noticed a problem with your reports."

"Your spelling is terrible. Your grammar is atrocious. Everyone in this room is a college graduate," the auburn-haired Chief Medical Officer pointed out. "Most of you have advanced graduate degrees. There is no excuse for this level of incompetence in official reports."

"It hardly does the boat credit," Bridger added, his voice deceptively mild, "when reports go to UEO Headquarters full of run-on sentences, comma splices, tense changes, subject-verb disagreement, and misspellings. It doesn't make Admiral Noyce happy, and it doesn't make me happy."

The room fell silent. A ship's captain is the last of the absolute monarchs. Failing to make him happy was a very serious offense.

"And as for my people," Dr. Westphalen chimed in, "most of you are sending reports back to universities and laboratories up-world. I find it embarrassing, as Chief Science Officer, to let reports with such egregious errors off the boat. And I have enough work of my own that I don't have time to proofread and correct your reports."

"Hey, I always use spellcheck," Lucas Wolenczak volunteered. The sixteen-year-old computer hacker was the youngest member of the boat's crew.

"Spellcheck is a good start, but it doesn't help with homophones," Bridger said.

"I thought 'don't ask - don't tell' took care of homophones," Krieg joked.

Lt. Cmdr. Katie Hitchcock kicked her ex-husband's shin under the table. "That's homophobes, you idiot."

"Mr. Krieg, what's your official job title?" Captain Bridger asked.

"Supply and Morale Officer, sir," Krieg replied instantly. His voice was serious, even slightly repentant. "Not court jester."

"Then why is this report signed 'Supply and Moral Officer'?" Bridger asked.

"Moral? Ben?" Lucas chuckled.

"That, Mr. Wolenczak, is something a spellcheck program can't catch. Spellcheck will tell you if a word is misspelled. It won't tell you if you've spelled the wrong word correctly," Bridger informed him.

Lucas settled down and sat up straighter in his chair. If the captain was calling him 'Mr. Wolenczak' instead of 'Kiddo' or 'Lucas,' it was definitely time to pay attention.

Dr. Westphalen pushed a button, illuminating the computer screen at the front of the room. "We're having a major problem with its and it's." She pointed to the sentences written on the screen. "I-t-s is a possessive pronoun, meaning belong to it. I-t-apostrophe-s is a contraction for it is." She read aloud from the screen. "Poor dog, it's hungry. Please fill its food bowl." She pointed to the word its' in a red circle with a slash across it. "There is no such word as i-t-s-apostrophe."

She pushed the button again. Three new sentences were displayed. "They're ready to go. Where are their coats? Over there," she read aloud. "They're," she pointed to the word, "is a contraction of they are or they were. Their," she pointed again, "means belonging to them. There is a place, meaning not here." She looked at the men and women crowded around the table. "I don't suppose anyone can tell me what's wrong with that last sentence?"

Lt. j. g. Tim O'Neill instantly raised his hand.

"Anyone other than O'Neill," Bridger requested. "I know you know this, Lieutenant. You probably should have been excused from this meeting. I've yet to find a spelling or grammatical error in any of your reports."

The bespectacled young communications officer tried not to blush.

Dr. Joshua Levin nodded. "It's a sentence fragment."

To be continued ...

**Author's Note: **_Standard fanfic disclaimer that wouldn't last ten seconds in a court of law: these aren't my characters, I'm just borrowing them for, um, typing practice. That's it, typing practice. I'll return them to their actual owners (relatively) undamaged. This is an amateur work of fiction; no profit beyond pleasure was derived from the writing. __**Actually, that's a fib.**__ I'm hoping to derive some profit from this story, albeit intellectual rather than financial. I generally loathe "preachy" stories, preferring to reserve sermons for Sunday. But this __is__ a preachy story. I'm sick and tired with all the typos on this website, especially with the attitude of so many writers that typos are OK if **A**, they don't have a beta-reader at the moment, **B**, they're not good typists, **C**, they just finished and they want to post the story immediately, etc., etc., etc. Well, **A**, buy a dictionary and a copy of Strunk & White's __Elements of Style__. Or get __Transitive Vampire__ or __Eats, Shoots, and Leaves__ from the library. The best investment I ever made was an 8th grade English book I got at a thrift store for fifty cents. **B**, practice. You'll get better. Don't be in a hurry. Better to do 10 wpm well than 78 wpm badly.** C**, what's the bloody hurry? Take your time and do the job right, since 90% of you never bother to go back to correct the errors later. {If English is not your native language, or if you have a learning disability, this lecture is not meant for you, but I do advise you to find a trusted beta-reader.} Most of what I know about English grammar, I learned from A, reading well-written books, and B, as a student teacher, trying to stay one lesson ahead of my students. When I was young, formal grammar instruction had fallen out of fashion; we were expected to just pick it up by osmosis. When I became a student teacher, the educational fads had changed, and studying grammatical rules was now "in." And I'd never been taught them! Nothing like being thrown off the dock to learn how to swim, huh? {I'd be lying if I said my stories were error-free, but at least I __try__ to proofread.} So just as Mary Poppins used a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down, I'll be using a story to help the spelling and grammar tips go down._

_I don't know yet if the next chapter will continue with _seaQuest_, or switch to Captain Simon Banks or Captain Karen Simms chewing out detectives who can't spell. I'll be adding to this, off and on, but I have other stories (my _seaQuest_ AUs, my _Master_ crossovers, my romance I hope to sell to Harlequin, etc.) that do take priority over trying to reinforce correct English grammar, spelling, and punctuation. If you were never taught it in school, it's not your fault, but you can learn. According to the website's guidelines, everyone here must be at least junior high age, yet I __continually__ see grade-school level errors._


	2. Homophones

**Staff Meeting, chapter 2**

**by Susan M. M.**

Standard fanfic disclaimer that wouldn't last ten seconds in a court of law: these aren't my characters. I'm just borrowing them for, um, typing practice. Yeah, that's it, typing practice. Based on characters and situations created by Rockne S O'Bannion. No financial profit was derived from the writing of this story, although I am hoping to derive some intellectual profit from the reading of it.

_Chapter Two_

"Homonyms are words that are that are pronounced alike, but have different meanings and – usually – different spellings." Dr. Westphalen wrote an example on the screen. "I stand here, can you hear me?"

"I thought you said the problem was homophones," Lt. Phillips said.

"Homonyms and homophones are synonyms," Dr. Westphalen replied.

"Er," O'Neill raised his hand tentatively, "that's not quite correct."

"Mr. O'Neill," Bridger nodded at him to continue.

"Technically, a homonym is a pair or group of words with the same spelling and pronunciation, but different meanings, like fair meaning just and fair meaning carnival, or stalk like part of a plant and stalk like following someone. A homophone is a word that's pronounced the same as another word, but differs in meaning. Homophones that are spelled the same, like rose the flower and rose the past tense of rise, are both homographs and homonyms. Homophones that are spelled differently, for example, carat like measuring a diamond or carrot the vegetable, are heterographs. At least, to a linguist," O'Neill tried not to blush as he stumbled to a halt. "Some people do tend to use the terms interchangeably."

"I stand corrected," the auburn-tressed CMO acknowledged.

Bridger pushed a button, and the screen showed 'discreet' and 'discrete.' "Lt. O'Neill is discreet about what he hears. Chief Ortiz listens for discrete sounds. Discreet," he pointed, "means circumspect. Discrete refers to having separate parts," he pointed to the word.

Bridger pushed the button again; the screen now showed 'compliment' and 'complement.' He pointed to the top word. "I just paid Mr. O'Neill a compliment." He pointed to the lower word. "The boat's current complement is two hundred fourteen. In the military, a ship's complement is the number of persons in a ship's full company, counting both officers and enlisted personnel." His grey eyes scanned the room. His gaze fell on Lucas. "Mr. Wolenczak, what are complementary angles?"

"Huh?" The question caught the teenage genius by surprise. At sixteen, he already had a Master's degree from Stanford. He hadn't bothered with complementary angles since he was nine or ten. "A pair of angles is complementary if the sum of their measures is ninety degrees."

"Correct. Two angles, which put together, add up to ninety degrees, complement each other," the captain confirmed. "Things that go well together, or go together naturally, are complementary."

"Like complementary colors," Ford added.

Dr. Westphalen glanced pointedly at Dr. Ungar, the marine archaeologist. "The large cylindrical object, encrusted with rust and barnacles, which we recovered from the wreck of the _Santa Ysabel_, was a cannon."

Bridger pushed the button as she spoke. 'Cannon' and 'canon' were displayed on the screen.

"The one-N canon is a religious term," Ford stated. "It's the laws and regulations accepted by a church as doctrine. It's also a type of priest in the Roman Catholic and Episcopalian churches."

Lucas chuckled quietly. "On the Internex, canon is what the fanfic writers call it when something is accurate to the source material. But they use both spellings interchangeably."

Ford raised one eyebrow. He turned and glared at the hacker, his expression saying more clearly than words ever could: 'do I look like the sort of person who has the time or inclination to read fanfic?'

Bridger pushed the button; the screen changed again. Three words were written there. "My sister is a teacher. When she was subbing, she said if the person she was filling in for didn't leave lesson plans, she could always do a lesson on to, two, and too for any grade from second to twelfth. 'To' is a preposition. People who do not proofread their reports will be going to the brig. 'Two' is a number. When Darwin's mother came to visit, we had two dolphins on board. 'Too' is an adverb meaning also or more than enough. Dr. Westphalen went to a marine biology conference, and Dr. Hokstad went , too."

The marine biologist looked up at the mention of her name.

Dr. Westphalen reached over and pushed the button. Two new words appeared. She pointed to the top one. "This vessel's principal mission is exploration. Our guiding principles," she pointed to the lower word, "are respect for the Earth's oceans and keeping the peace."

"That's peace, p-e-a-c-e," Ford interjected. "Not piece like a piece of pie, p-i-e-c-e."

She pushed the button again. Six pairs of homophones appeared on the screen: fare/fair, pear/pair, steel/steal, fourth/forth, whole/hole, hoard/horde. "Is it necessary for the captain and me to go over all of these? Or can you remember to consult a dictionary?"

Several people found the tabletop suddenly fascinating. Others glanced down at their shoes. There was a ragged chorus of "yes, ma'ams" and "yes, doctors" and one "yes, sir." Bridger and the CMO shared an amused glance at that last one. UEO officers were addressed as 'sir,' regardless of gender. Dr. Westphalen, however, was a civilian employee of the UEO rather than a military officer. She did not merit the title 'sir.'

"Mr. Krieg, you're in charge of the library. We do have dictionaries on board, don't we?"

"Yes, sir," Krieg replied crisply. "Two paperback dictionaries, one big fat hardcover, as well as the OED on CD-rom. Plus whatever people have in their personal supplies. I know Tim-, uh, Lt.O'Neill has several reference books in his quarters, and he's not the only one."

"Good. And I know Lucas isn't the only one on board who knows how to use the Internex. Wikipedia has a page called 'List of commonly misused English words.' Therefore, I will not accept any future excuses for misspelling," the captain announced.

_sQ_

**sQ**

_sQ_

**Author's Note: **I'm not trying to put anyone down or insult anyone. But the typos are hurting my brain, and if this will refresh your memory of what you've forgotten since your school days, or teach you what you never learned, then I hope this helps. I'm not aiming this at writers like YuryJulian or Kiddo, where English is not their first language, or writers with learning disabilities, like my husband and daughter. But if your native language is English, then I don't think it's asking too much of you to proofread the dog-goned story. Your literary heritage is William Shakespeare and Edmund Spenser, Mark Twain and Margaret Mitchell, Robert Heinlein and O. Henry. Honor those who came before you by using the language properly. Yes, the Wikipedia page I mentioned does exist. As _seaQuest_ is only five years in the future, I suspect Wikipedia dot org will still be around. And the initials OED stand for Oxford English Dictionary, a wonderful reference item too expensive for the average reader/writer, but found in many university libraries. BTW, is anyone else mildly embarrassed by the fact that most of the European writers on this website write more grammatical English than the American authors?


	3. Apostrophes

**Staff Meeting**

by Susan M. M.

**Author's Note: **_Standard fanfic disclaimer that wouldn't last ten seconds in a court of law: these aren't my characters, I'm just borrowing them for, um, typing practice. That's it, typing practice. I'll return them to their actual owners (relatively) undamaged. Based on characters and situations created by Rockne S. O'Bannon. This is an amateur work of fiction; no profit beyond pleasure was derived from the writing, although I am hoping to derive some intellectual profit from the reading of it._

**Chapter 3**

"There's also a problem with apostrophes," Ford explained. "Apostrophes are not used to indicate plurals." He looked pointedly at Krieg as he spoke.

Krieg, in a rare bout of discretion, kept his mouth shut.

"Apostrophes should not be used in the plural forms of nouns. However," Dr. Westphalen offered as a codicil, "in certain expressions that are not nouns, an apostrophe followed by an S is used to form the plural: figures, letters, signs, words referred to as words."

"Words referred to as words?" Lucas repeated. "That's confusingly self-referential."

"You, O writer of long sentences, tend to use too many and's in your sentences," she pointed out to the boy. "If I were writing your performance review, I would write that sentence by putting an apostrophe-s after the word 'and'." Her gaze fell on Dr. Ungar. "Or I might say that someone's penmanship was so atrocious that I could not distinguish his n's from his m's."

"In modern English, apostrophes are used to form contractions and to indicate possession," Captain Bridger stated. "For contractions, the apostrophe takes the place of one or more missing letters." He pushed a button and brought up a new image on the screen. "Secretary to sec'y, international to internat'l, do not to don't, we are to we're - "

"Not to be confused with were or where," Dr. Westphalen interrupted.

"Which brings us back to they're, there, and their, which Dr. Westphalen mentioned earlier," Ford concluded.

"For the possessive form of any singular noun, add apostrophe-s. Do not change any letters. Do not add any letters beyond the apostrophe-s. Do not delete any letters," Bridger instructed.

"Do not pass Go; do not collect two hundred dollars," Krieg muttered under his breath. Hitchcock kicked him again.

"To form the possessive of a plural noun, first write the noun. If it doesn't end in S - a twenty-five out of twenty-six chance -add apostrophe-s, just as you would for a singular noun. If a plural noun does end in S, just add the apostrophe without an additional S." Bridger called up a new image on the screen.

Dr. Westphalen read aloud, "A shark's teeth. Sharks' teeth. A man's life. Men's lives. Do you understand these examples?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Yes, Doctor."

"Contractions and possessives - nothing else for apostrophe-s. Is that clear?" Bridger asked.

O'Neill opened his mouth, then shut it again. Originally, the possessive form of nouns had been a contraction: Bridger his boat became Bridger's boat, Lucas his book became Lucas' book. However, he doubted his crewmates would share his interest in linguistic evolution. He already had enough of a reputation as a geeky techno-nerd; he didn't need to add to it.

sQ

**sQ**

sQ

**Author's Note:** When I started to write this chapter, I had planned to say that under no circumstances should apostrophes ever be used to indicate plurals. Then I double-checked the 1965 edition of _Building Better English_, an 8th grade grammar book I picked up for fifty cents at a thrift store, and learned the rule about making plurals of numbers, figures, signs, and words referred to as words. (7's, j's, *'s, and's, etc.) If I ever learned that rule when I was younger, I had long since forgotten it. Obviously, I am not the Guru of Grammar. I guess both old saws are true: _you learn something new every day_, and _any book you haven't read yet is a new one_. I'm using the 1965 textbook because I've mislaid my copy of Strunk & White's _Elements of Style_, and it's a fascinating time capsule. No mention of computers, and when it talks about clear communication on the telephone, it mentions party lines, like on the old Lassie TV show.


End file.
